L-14 Houses Then and Now

You will learn about

• Houses in the past
• Houses in villages
• Houses in cities
• Houses designed for different climates
• Slums
Why do we need a house?
- For shelter
- For protection – dust, cold, rain, wind and heat,
thieves, strangers and wild animals
- Feel safe
Houses in the past
• Early men sheltered themselves from bad
weather and danger by living in caves.
• Later, human beings began to build simple
homes from the natural materials- wood,
bamboo, straw, dried grass and mud
• With time people began to build stronger
houses with sturdier construction
materials such as mud-brick.
 Houses in villages
• Houses are mostly made of bricks and
thatched roofs
• It may have a big open area with trees in the
front and a vegetable garden in the backyard
• The walls and floor of village huts were
painted by a mixture of mud, grass and cow
dung.
 Houses in villages
With advancements in education & technology, a
lot of developments have taken place in
villages

 Availability of clean water

 Kutcha houses are replaced by semi-pucca &
pucca houses
 Well-developed drainage and sewage system
Thatched roof Semi-pucca
house

Pucca house
 Houses in cities
 In cities houses are made of durable materials such as wood,
bricks, glass and metal.
 Timber or wood is one of the oldest building materials used by
human beings.
 Like brick and stone, wood allow air and moisture to pass through
it and the air gets filtered as it passes through the timber.
 Today, even glass can be used to make walls of a building
 Brick-making process

• Bricks are one of the most important materials

used to build houses.
• They are made by moulding clay into rectangular
blocks.
• These blocks are then hardened by burning in a
kiln or an oven
Walls of a building floor of a house

Bricks & cement bricks & cement

Plastering covered with concrete,

stones, tiles or wood
Painting

Roofs of a house can be made with tin sheets,

concrete, stone or tiles placed on a network of
 Different types of houses in cities
• Multistorey apartments – lots of
flats present in a single building.
The houses are in series and next to
one another
• Builder flats- constructed by a
single builder. They are not a part of
townships. They are small versions
of multistorey buildings.
 Different types of houses in cities
• Penthouse – lies on the top most of a
multistorey building. All apartments on
the top most floor are combined to
form one big apartment which is
referred to as the pent house
• Row houses – are residential colonies
in which house are built together to
form a colony. These houses are
designed in a similar fashion and share
a common wall.
 Different types of houses in cities
• Bungalow – a single storey house
with a broad front porch, having
either no upper floor or upper
rooms set in the roof typically with
dormer windows
 Skyscrapers
• A very tall building is known as skyscraper
• Skyscrapers can accommodate many people and are, thus preferred in
metropolitan cities
• Skyscrapers need to be flexible in strong winds yet stay sturdy enough, so that
they do not sway in the wind.
• Architects and engineers have to design these buildings in a manner that they are
safe for people to live in.
• Architects and engineers have to study the load and stress a building would
withstand along with the changes in temperature & weather conditions
• All these factors affect the design & materials used for making the building.
 Houses designed for different climates
 Hot-dry regions
 Buildings have thick walls of stone
or mud so that the heat from
outside does not come in easily.
 The roofs of the building are flat or
shallow domes so that little area is
exposed to the sun
 Hot, Wet Climates

 Houses are build on stilts or

poles
 The roofs of the houses are
slanted and steep so that the
rain water can easily slide off
 Extremely Cold regions
 People living in cold regions build
igloos
 Igloos are dome shaped houses
made of blocks of ice and lined with
sealskin and fur
 This keeps the cold winds out and
inside warm
 People keep themselves warm by
using heat from oil lamps and the
heat given by their bodies
 Inuits / Eskimos live in it
 Slums
• A slum is a part of a city or a town
where many people live in closely
packed, decrepit (bad condition)
housing units.
• These people usually belong to low-
income groups and cannot meet their
basic needs.
• The houses in the slums are made of
bricks, mud, tin sheets and plastic
sheets
 Factors that contribute in the establishment &
expansion of slums
 Unemployment: the family size is large and the number of
earning members is low.
 Industrialisation: development of industries leading to
temporary housing labourers.
 In-migration: People from low income groups shift to
bigger towns or cities for work and low-cost housing.
 Characteristics of slums
 Large number of people live in a small space.
 Houses and roads are unorganised.
 Health and cleanliness are not given enough care and attention
 Poor sewage and drainage system- breeding grounds for pests and
insects.
 Rate of diseases is high
 Lack of education is the root cause of poverty among slum dwellers